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iPhones are hard to use

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Re: iPhones are hard to use

#591

Post by dublin »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #461
vbezhenar wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to use different languages for different applications. I'm using Russian and English languages interchangeably on my phone. Luckily many applications nowadays have separate language setting, but not all. That's not an outlier request. I hate that English-dominating CS monoculture that thinks that everyone is like them. It caused great headache of 8-bit encodings which the rest of the world had to deal with f…

Yup. "ASCII is mostly OK if you're USian and only use English, therefore no problem exists."

It was good enough for UNIX... Heck, it was a big deal when early uucp and Internet links were finally 8-bit clean! (Only 7 bits are needed for plain old English ASCII, and when you were paying many thousands of dollars a month for a T1 (1.5Mbps) connection, using 7-bit was an instant 12% bandwidth boost...)

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#592

Post by dublin »

fit2rule wrote: post #369
coldtea wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know, the person can search for 1-2 minutes how to change the font, when they need to, if and when their "eyesight changes" enough during their years of using iPhones to warranty it. Better than cramming every such feature as a first priority, and making a UI that's confusing for everyday use.

You didn't read the article? Even though its buried there, in the system prefs, people who need to change such settings still cannot find them. That's the point: the UI is already confusing for everyday use, and we honestly expect better of Apple.

Apple's design of Settings has clearly evolved via accretion rather than any thoughtful and considered design. The fact that something is possible in a UI/UX has no bearing on the fact that it's fundamental design can still suck huevos.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#593

Post by dublin »

dwd wrote: post #327
eridius wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not about to try it right now (don't want to mess up my contacts) but I'm pretty sure you can just tell Siri that "suchandsuch is my wife" and she'll update the relevant Contact cards for you.

Right there you highlighted the biggest issue most people have. They're scared to touch or change anything in case they mess something up. All devices need a universal undo so you can change something and easily undo if you get it wrong or you just preferred the old setting. For security you could prompt after a while to make the new settings permanent and delete the snapshot.

And if you think people are terrified of messing up the iPhone itself, they cower in mortal fear at trying to do anything in iTunes, which is still, a decade on, inexplicably the only way to do many things with an iPhone (like, for instance, back it up if you don't trust your personal info to iCloud...)

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#594

Post by dublin »

rangibaby wrote: post #286
karmakaze wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem lies in what's semi-advanced to one is critical or basic to many others. Apple has been known to hide (aka. make subtle) basic operations. How often have you wanted to load a page in 'desktop mode' in mobile Safari? It's there, just invisibly so. The UI does not teach in the name of clean/minimal design which is Apple's way: form over function. Edit: it's the equivalent to not putting keyboard shortcut ke…

Steve Jobs was heavily against hidden functionality (sorry there is a word for it I can't remember off the top of my head). It's why Macs had one-button mice for so long. It wasn't until the third major revision of the OS that iPhones got copy+paste!

Apple hides tons of stuff - often so well that they go missing for years. I hate to admit this (I'm an 8-time tech CTO), but I thought that Apple had made the bonehead decision to completely remove the iOS search feature after swiping to the left from the home screen stopped working (iOS 6?). It was literally years (at least iOS 10!) before I accidentally invoked the absolutely opaque "swipe down from the middle of a home screen" gesture to discover search was still possible.

Actually, I wish any modern smartphone OS had half the thought put into it that Palm had 20 years ago. After all this time, nothing even comes close for contact and calendar management, as well as actual phone use!

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#595

Post by marmshallow »

rtpg wrote: post #245
varenc wrote: post #110

Most of this article just lists semi-advanced features that people don't know about. I think that’s Apple’s intention... Having every feature and option up in your face can reduce usability and make simple tasks harder for the average user. Apple wants a product that's easy for anyone to use and that often means keeping non-essential features out of the way. I’d be more interesting in seeing feedback for Apple on how…

I get that, but I do think that saying that text size is an advanced feature is just not true. Loads and loads of people are older than 40. Loads of people just have weaker eyesight. Apple has really good accessibility tools, and it would make a _lot_ of sense for there to be a dedicated part of the onboarding for accessibility.

Our of curiosity, how is the accessibility of Hacker News? I don’t know much about how to verify that. And I imagine threaded comment pages would be especially difficult to interpret non-visually

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#597

Post by Double_a_92 »

coldtea wrote: post #375
fit2rule wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't read the article? Even though its buried there, in the system prefs, people who need to change such settings still cannot find them. That's the point: the UI is already confusing for everyday use, and we honestly expect better of Apple.

> You didn't read the article? Even though its buried there, in the system prefs, people who need to change such settings still cannot find them. They can always look them up (online), set them, and forget them. Better than having all such settings front and center over more commonly used settings.

Would you say that everyones grandparents (which mostly could use that setting) are capable of googling tutorials?

Even most young people I know are not able to google things (even if it's some important information they urgently need). Or maybe they just don't get the idea of even asking the internet.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#598

Post by Double_a_92 »

djtango wrote: post #464
varenc wrote: post #110

Most of this article just lists semi-advanced features that people don't know about. I think that’s Apple’s intention... Having every feature and option up in your face can reduce usability and make simple tasks harder for the average user. Apple wants a product that's easy for anyone to use and that often means keeping non-essential features out of the way. I’d be more interesting in seeing feedback for Apple on how…

I recently had to help my mother with some tech support. One of the things I needed to do was turn off the device - I had to actually Google how to turn off an iPhone X. This is after me owning 3 generations of iPhone (3S-4S) and an iPad AND the family owning one of every main iPhone since 3S. Is turning off the device an advanced feature?

> Is turning off the device an advanced feature?

I guess most people really never need to turn it off. Maybe when switching sim cards to not hotplug them?

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#599

Post by Piskvorrr »

dublin wrote: post #591
Piskvorrr wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. "ASCII is mostly OK if you're USian and only use English, therefore no problem exists."

It was good enough for UNIX... Heck, it was a big deal when early uucp and Internet links were finally 8-bit clean! (Only 7 bits are needed for plain old English ASCII, and when you were paying many thousands of dollars a month for a T1 (1.5Mbps) connection, using 7-bit was an instant 12% bandwidth boost...)

Sure, but that's a historical quirk - epoch time has advanced from 0 a bit ;)

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#600

Post by fit2rule »

schrodinger wrote: post #451
ovi256 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an outlier for me. Most people I know switch between English for work and international friends and the local language for mostly everything else. I'm switching languages I type in every whatsapp conversation. On an older Android version that doesn't track per chat language, I have to switch the keyboard every single time. Three languages. And I happen to know more.

You’re talking about switching the keyboard language, which is easy to do all the time. The parent is talking about changing the language of the entire phones UI, which seems like something you’d do significantly less frequently than changing the keyboard.

Actually, I'd do it frequently if I could, since I live in a multi-lingual household.
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